I’ve read this book a few weeks ago and it’s a very thrilling story. The 26-year-old Elizabeth is ill of epilepsy and is beein cured with a new (and still experimental) method of brain treatment. In her brain are implanted a dozen electrodes, all in different areas of the brain. Each of these can be activated selectively in electronically form from a device outside of her. This device is given to her and she can activate it as often and as long as she likes to.

The by-effects of this treatment are the things, this book is all about. By activating one specific electrode, she goes into the body of Jenny Curran, who lives a century before!
Elizabeth sees through the eyes of Jenny and sees and hears all the things, Jenny is doing, while she is in her (Jenny’s) body. However, Elizabeth is still keeping her own consciousness from the 20th century and has no access to Jenny’s thoughts. The time flow in both centuries is the same: if Elizabeth waits 2 days and then enters Jenny’s body, then also in Jenny’s time in the 19th century 2 days have passed.

So she has a chance, to see, smell, hear, listen firsthand to the environment and people, who are living a century ago. This in itself is interesting enough. What does Elizabeth make out of it? But this goes much further, she gets deeper and deeper involved in the life of Jenny and is spending more and more time in Jenny’s body. Eventually, she’s no longer an observer only…

To close, I like to quote a passage from the book, Elizabeth speaks in the 1st person, meaning: I = Elizabeth (page 120):

“I still wish I could know what’s going on in Jenny’s mind; even if it turns out, that she’s only a fantasy, a fragment of my own imagination, I’ve really come to think of her as an authentic, separate person. In a way, she’s literally the closest friend I’ve ever had; at least, I’ve certainly never been right inside someone else’s head before, if you could call that “friendship”.

But I’d like to have access to her memories, to her emotions and opinions and thoughts about the future. Maybe it’s crazy of me to assume that those things exist at all, that she’s a separate entity with her own mind; but I do have a strong feeling that she is, in some way or other, a different person, in spite of our partially shared perceptions. I know that some of her reactions havn’t been what mine would be: the way she reads, for example, and some of the things that she chooses to look at or ignore, and her aloof manner with servants in her house.

I feel that there’s an awful lot that I still have to learn about her and her life, and I wish I could learn it by somehow communicating with her directly, instead of just spying on her world through her eyes and ears. It does feel like spying, too; she doesn’t ever seem to notice that I’m there “with her” at all. Maybe if I try hard enough, I can make more direct contact with her. I wonder how she’d feel about that – knowing that she’s not alone.” ( )